Recently I learned how skilled employees at one manufacturing company demonstrate their understanding of blueprints and measurements as part of their certification program. These workers need to be precise—down to tolerances as narrow as a human hair!

How to measure employee’s accuracy and understanding? Scan blueprints and quality documents from job orders into Questionmark Perception and then pose questions about them.

Some questions require participants to identify the exact place on the blueprint where particular information should be found. Others ask them to identify different elements within the blueprint or enter a calculated value such as a maximum limit interpreted from the print.

It used to be that engineering staff would conduct time-consuming, one-on-one certifications with workers. In addition to saving time, the online tests offer greater objectivity than the one-on-one exams. They also provide a “blueprint” of sorts for future learning: If someone doesn’t pass a certification, a supervisor reviews the Perception Coaching Report from the exam to identify problem areas. Excel files recording employees’ performance on all of the questions help identify weaknesses in their collective understanding, prompting trainers to focus on those areas.